Paul Kirkley: Compromise replaced by testing to destruction

I’ve written several times in these columns about the modern craze for testing every blindingly obvious theory to destruction: how, from Trump to Truss, Boris to Brexit, climate change to – it now appears – crumbly concrete, we always have to go through the painful motions of waiting for it all to go wrong, rather than taking the easy route of just heeding the warnings in the first place.

And to that list, I suppose we should now add the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s (GCP) congestion charge proposals, which everybody – your correspondent included – basically announced as dead on arrival last year.

When I wrote, back in December, that “obviously a stake will be driven through its heart eventually,” it wasn’t because I’m some sort of genius superforecaster; on the contrary – the key word there was “obviously”.